Dreams about Dead People
Click below on the links to find what you are seeking
Dreams about People We Know who have Died
Dreams about a Dead Person
How can We Talk to the Dead and They can Talk With Us?
Dreams about a Dead Husband or Wife
Dreams about a Dead Mother
Dreams about a Dead Child
Summary of after death experience
What Happens When Our Body Dies?
Coming back to earth
The Journey Through Death and Back
Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death
Dreams about People We Know who have Died
Dreams in which dead people appear are sometimes expressive of our attempts to deal with our feelings, guilt or anger in connection with the person who died; or our own feelings about death. When someone close to us dies we go through a period of change from relating to them as an external reality, to meeting and accepting them as alive in our memories and inner life.
It is wise to understand something before you read what else has been said. For instance, a single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism. We all started from the original one cell, and we, you and I, are the result of gathered experience.
As adults we believe we are complete and whole. A seed is a return to the source of life and it/our beginnings under the sun. Consciousness on our planet started in the slime of creation, the slime we return to, to procreate. And from that slime which is a vehicle for our seed to exist in, our awareness goes through the whole process of evolution as we develop in mother’s womb, the dividing of cells, the forming of structure and organs, the creation of a creature with gills, and on to a human type form ready to breathe air, carrying your seed onwards.
As one textbook states, “A human is not constructed like a modern office building, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. . . but rather like an ancient historic edifice to which wings and sections were added at different times and which was not modernised until it was almost completed.” See Levels of the Brain
In doing so it uses many of the things that Life or Nature learnt from past life-forms that it uses in dealing with human life. As an example plants use very clever system with bulbs and other root systems. A bulb can grow a new flower each year and each flower is a totally new and unique thing. The the flower dies and its essense or experience is drawn back into the bulb, and next season another unique flower emerges. This hold true for humans too.
Our present personality has never existed before. It lives with a new brain that doesn’t carry old memories. Searching within its own experience and memories it could never find memory of any past lives because our present brain has no connection with the past seeds, yet our seed is the collection of man, many lives lived. Tendencies, unaccountable fears or talents, give the clue to these past selves. See Mushrooms
These past lives are not remembered easily because the new soul that developed in the new body had no past connections because it has a new brain. The soul or personality is built from the local memories stored in the new brain. So, memories of the past can only be attained by a deep awareness of our core awareness.
So, dead people can simply be people from our past. Considering that the major part of our learning and experience occur in relationship to other people, such learning and experience can be represented by characters from the past. For instance a first boyfriend in a dream would depict all the emotions and struggles we met in that relationship, and what we learned from it or took away from it that still influences present relationships. Therefore dreaming often of people we knew in the past would suggest that past experiences or lessons are very active at the moment, or we are reviewing those areas of our life. A woman who had emigrated to Britain from a very different cultural background frequently dreamt, even twenty years afterwards, of people she knew in her native country. This shows her still very much in contact with her own cultural values and experiences.
Example: ‘My husband’s mother, no longer alive, came and slid her arms carefully under me and lifted me up. I shouted ‘Put me down! Put me down! I don’t want to go yet.’ She carefully lowered me onto the bed and disappeared.’ E. H. – In this example the dreamer is feeling fear about being carried off by death.
Example: ‘A dark grey sugar loaf form materialised. This pillar lightened in shade as I watched. It didn’t move. I began to think it was Mrs. Molten who died in 1956. The feeling grew stronger but still the colour lightened. Then it bent over and kissed my head. In that instant I knew it WAS my mother. An ecstatic joy and happiness such as I have never known on earth suffused me. That happiness remained constantly in mind for the next few days.’ Mr M.
Here the dreamer has not only come to terms with his mother’s and his own death, but also found this inner reality.
Example: ‘A couple of months ago as I was waking I felt my husband’s arm across me and most realistically experienced my hand wrapping around his arm and turning toward him which I had done so often in his lifetime and saying ‘I thought you had died. Thank God you have not.’ Then I awoke alone and terribly shaken.’ Mrs I. – The example both shows the resolution of the loss, but also the paradox felt at realising the meeting was an inner reality.
A critic might say this is only a dream in which a lonely woman is replaying memories of her dead husband’s presence for her own comfort. Thus her disappointment on being disillusioned. Whatever our opinion, the women has within her such memories to replay. These are a reality. The inner reality is of what experience was left within her from the relationship. Her challenge is whether she can meet this treasure with its share of pain, and draw out of it the essence which enriches her own being. That is the spiritual life of her husband. The ‘aliveness’ of her husband in that sense is also social, because many other people share memories of the same person. What arises into their own lives from such memories, is the observable influence of the now dead person. But the dead also touch us more mysteriously, as in the next example. See: Dead Husband or Ex
Example: In a recent news program on television, a man who survived the Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore had been given a photograph of children by a dying soldier he did not know. The man had asked him to tell his family of his death, but did not give his name. The photograph was kept for forty odd years, the man still wanting to complete his promise but not know how. One night he dreamt he was told the man’s name. Enquiries soon found the family of the man, who had an identical photograph.
Dreams about a Dead Person – General Meaning:
This can represent some area of your life that has ‘died’. It can refer to death of feelings, such as hopelessness in connection with relationship and the loss of feelings about someone; the depression that follows big changes in your life such as loss of a loved partner, job, or child. It can also reflect the sense you have of your life in general, that it is without the stimulus of motivation and satisfaction, as when one feels oneself in a ‘going nowhere’ relationship or life situation. The dead person in the dream may link several of these feelings together, as symbols often represent huge areas of our experience. So the dead person my be a part of oneself you want to leave behind, to die out.
Some dreams are so clearly about the person who died. Here is an example of such a dream by a young child.
With his brothers and friends he went to bathe in a mill pool. He was only four or five at the time, and could not swim. In the recklessness of their-play, one of the children pushed him into deeper water. At that moment, the mill gates opened and water rushed through carrying him along. He was drowned – but some adults who were hastily called to the scene managed to pull him out and revive him.
As his father carried him home in his arms, the boy talked about his mother, who had died some years earlier and at first his father smiled at his story.
The boy said that as he went under the water he felt himself sinking down and down into darkness. Then there was a change and he felt himself rising up slowly until at last he rose to the surface.
He was in a huge sea. Around him, other people were also surfacing, and all were being gradually washed towards the nearby shore. There on the beach, people waited, and greeted those who were brought to them by the sea.
And as he himself drew near there on a small promontory were his grandparents waiting to welcome him – and in front – his mother, and she bent to draw him into her arms. She took hold of his hands and as she did so, a cross around her neck swung before his face. Sparkling in it were seven stones. But at that moment, something seemed to pull him away, and he sank into the sea and at last awoke on the riverbank.
The other half of the Story
At the conclusion of the story, his father’s condescending smile vanished. They were now at home and his father left the room, obviously deeply moved. Only years later did he tell his son the other half of the story.
The boy’s mother had died when her son was tiny and she had died on her birthday. For many weeks before, her husband had saved for a special present which he had kept secret. On her death, heart-broken, he had crept down to the coffin in the middle of the night, unscrewed the lid and given the present to his dead wife. It was a cross with seven stones, and the secret of it had been buried with her.
Putting together a picture of many such death experiences, we can begin to see a general view of what it might be like, what it certainly is for some, to die.
First of all comes a lessening and eventual disappearance of bodily sensations. Although all pain and physical awareness goes, most people are still conscious of their physical surroundings and of other people. In fact they often watch their own body breathe its last struggling breaths.
Usually people see themselves in a body, but it’s sometimes more perfect than the body they have just left. Their perceptions are nearly always enormously heightened in many ways. There seems to be no sensation of gravity or weight – the whole room or area can be seen instantaneously, as if with circular vision, and there is an awareness of the thoughts and emotions of those present.
See Talking with those who have passed on
Dreams about a Dead Husband or Wife:
Many dreams of dead people come from women who have lost their husband. It is common to have disturbing dreams for some period afterwards; or not be able to dream about the husband or wife at all; or to see the partner in the distance but not get near. In accepting the death, meeting any feelings of loss, grief, anger and continuing love, the meeting become easier.
But as with the example above, there are many cases where people meet their dead in dreams and have tremendous assurance.
Dreams about a Dead Mother:
As with other ‘dead person’ dreams they usually show how we are working out or unfolding our relationship with them. They can be wonderfully confirming of continued existence.
Example: ‘A dark grey sugar loaf form materialised. This pillar lightened in shade as I watched. It didn’t move. I began to think it was Mrs. Molten who died in 1956. The feeling grew stronger but still the colour lightened. Then it bent over and kissed my head. In that instant I knew it WAS my mother. An ecstatic joy and happiness such as I have never known on earth suffused me. That happiness remained constantly in mind for the next few days.’ Mr. M.
Dreams about a Dead Child:
When our child dies it is one of the most heartbreaking experiences we can meet. Sometimes it takes years to adjust to what has happened. Not only is the adjustment emotional and psychological, but also your way of life is often built around the person you have lost. Therefore the changes we meet can be enormous. However, we each have enormous resources of healing and ability to meet the new if we can access them. Very often there are experiences we have, or dreams, that continue our relationship with the child. Unfortunately we live in a culture that often denies the possibility of this.
The example below shows how this can be possible.
For instance, Dr. Morse, in his book Closer to the Light, tells of a mother who came to him because she hadn’t slept properly for 1041 nights after the death of her son. She showed him a picture of her son, but Dr Morse was suddenly called away to a ward emergency. Having dealt with the sick baby, he was writing up the notes and a nurse who had been helping said to him, ‘Who was that person who came in with you? Is he a student?’
Morse did not understand what the nurse was talking about as nobody had come into the hospital with him. As he was trying to find a pen for the notes he was writing he pulled out the photograph of the woman’s son. Immediately the nurse said, ‘That’s him. He kept trying to get your attention’.
When he returned to his office Morse asked the mother if she had ever been contacted by her son after his death. She said, ‘Oh yes. After he died, for several nights he would stand at the foot of my bed and tell me he was alright, and that I should stop crying. But that was only a crazy dream.’ However, such things are not crazy dreams, but insights into a greater reality.
After her conversation with Dr. Morse the woman slept properly for the fist time in nearly three years.
Summary of after death experience
Because after death we are still in a dream like existence, we tend to create around us those things we expect to see or experience. So someone who has no previous information about death may wander around for awhile confused. A Christian may see Christ welcoming them, so the beginnings are very varied, and a Buddhist might meet Buddha, or a Muslim might see Muhammad. But there is some sort of life review. This is about harvesting all of value from the life experience. Not only do we gathered the lessons we learned from our life, but we also relive it moment by moment, feeling and reviewing our own feelings, but also the feelings we engendered in others. But because we are no longer living a life in three dimensions and time, it will be an all at once experience, not stretched over time.
This can be quite a trial considering the life we have lived. But it is not a judgement from outside us, but a self judgement of the quality of our life. We need to pass through this because after death we have left the physical world and moving toward the spiritual. We can see this as the Big Self; the Self with Enormous Love. But there is an enormous transition taking place at death. We lived within a body, and now without it we have to be ready for life without it in what is called the spirit world. That is why the life review is necessary. All our earthly experience has to be put through a transformation to make it fit for a wider life. The wider life works through universal connections, and the less we personally can connect with the universal the less fit we are for the universal life.
Something that I have noticed is that some people believe, and therefore experience, that ‘heaven’ is exactly like life on earth except better. They see it as having houses and living much the same way. But that is not really the whole truth, because just as our body grows and changes, so do we in the after death state.
It seems as if there is a great difference between existing in a body and surviving in the grand world of the spirit. For in the spirit world there has to be found something that will link the life with giving and receiving from others, and of course the integration with a greater purpose.
Many people say they go along a tunnel toward a great light, and then a great spirit leads them through life review. Others go through a door to the light, and others go up a flight of grand stairs.
Having lost their body and its appetites there may be a period of adaptation to a life in a world without boundaries. Also because the spirit world is similar to the world of dreams, you create around you an environment made up of your own inner state. So if you are full of hate, murderous impulses and selfishness, you create a world like that is usually called hell. We are not ‘cast into hell’ we create it ourselves.
The same with heaven, it is created out of all the attitudes and ideas and feelings that are in harmony with the way the universe works or is. As a friend told me after his death, “I cannot escape myself. This is because everywhere I look is like a mirror. Every direction I find a reflection of me. It is three-dimensional. It doesn’t matter if I look up or down, left or right, all I see are expressions of who I am.”
At first one will look much as you did at death, except if you are old or ill, then you have quickly gained a more youthful and healthy appearance. But of course that is only your physical shape, and you will create that because that is who you think you are. But a great and probably slow swing over will occur. Because your body is gone, and you are moving toward the spiritual being that has always stood behind your life and witnessed it and given it impulses to try to live out, so gradually you may lose any sense of being male or female.
It is possible some people will not make it that far, but will go into a sleep state until their next life in the body. But if they can maintain consciousness as they meet these changes they will slowly become a greater being, and have an awareness that could be seen as super human, touching all around them. This is why some dead relatives come back to us in dreams and visions and tell us things they would never have normally been capable of knowing.
Another conversation with a dead friend stated some of this:
I seems to me that things are different for me now. I feel something that is difficult to understand. I seem to be getting less and less of the me I knew; yet at the same time more of who I am. More of me is being lost, but at the same time more of me is being gained. A strange paradox.
Then there is the going beyond even more barriers toward what can be called real spiritual awareness.
In the next region, one sees how the person’s life has accorded not only with their own Self, but with the ‘true being of the world’. We see ourselves as we exist, in or out of harmony with that world consciousness, that essence of all beings, sometimes called God or the Christ, or Krishna, or Buddha. Here is the judging, the self judging, of the ‘quick and the dead.’
And finally, in this withdrawal, the seventh region is reached, ‘quick or dead’, asleep or awake to the highest in us. ‘The man stands here’ says Steiner, ‘in the presence of the “Life-kernels”, which have been transplanted from higher worlds, in order that in them they may fulfil their tasks.’ These ‘tasks’, expressing through the self, mediated by the soul, and materialised by the body, usually motivate us unconsciously. In this region, if consciousness remains, we know ourselves as the whole cosmos of sun, moon, planets, and stars; as all beings, creatures and kingdoms. When we look at these through our physical eyes, we are looking at our own wholeness. The ‘Life kernel’ is the doorway to other ‘cosmic beings’. ‘The life between death and a new birth, and is really a living through the world of stars: but this means, through the spirit of the world of stars,’ not the physical stars. See What Happens When I Die?
Coming back to earth
Having made this ascent to the innermost of our nature, the essence of the whole cosmos, there now comes for most of us, a return to a fresh physical experience.
There awakens a ‘desire’ or direction, to perfect one’s own being and that of the earth. ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,’ is an impulse from this region. Depending upon what fruits were brought to each region, this descent enables certain things, qualities or strengths to be ‘claimed’ from each level of our being. A new spiritual ‘seed’ or ‘germ’ is fashioned which will play its part in fashioning our body. The essence of the future personality chooses the hereditary line and its parents. Steiner says the parents provide a seed bed of physical substance, impregnated with their own characteristics of body and psyche. At conception, the material substance is broken down into the germinal level of chaos, in which all physical form is dissolved. The spirit ‘germ’ of the new being takes hold of this.
At birth the ‘germ’ of the future personality and body, is clothed with physical substance drawn from the parents, along with inherited temperamental qualities. Working with these as materials is the essence of the past life and death experience. This spiritual impulse, takes the ‘model’ given by the parents, and works into it the pattern it brings from its central experience. So there comes into being, through life and death, another life upon the earth.
Just as there was a reliving of life at death, so just prior to birth there is a reliving of death. ‘He sees a tableau which this time displays all the hindrances he must remove, if his evolution is to make further progress. And what he sees becomes the starting point of forces that he must carry with him into a new life. See Life and Death; Steiner Life after death
Another conversation with a dead friend provided the following information.
I am in process of creating a new life. But this is something like a work of art, not however, as we think of it with brush and paint. I felt it like a constant rise and fall of possibilities and forms that I, the Spirit I, was giving birth to. As one rose it expressed a certain quality, and this was in some way compared, or its harmonic compared, with all that existed in the changing spiritual and physical world. There was as yet no total interface between what was being created in this way, and what was expressed by the changing worlds. So I was gradually sifting the emphasis of all it contained from life experience and its possible future connections with physical life, moving toward a harmonic unity. It was explained to me that the unity would be a real connection with time, place, parents and the life that would emerge from them. When that harmonic unity was made the new life would begin.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Have I dreamt of any dead person?
How did I react to the dream?
Can I accept that we have an inner world?
See Inner World – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Comments
For the past 5 years I have been dreaming of my missing uncle, who was kidnapped back in March 2006, he was only about 35-36 years old when a group of cartels took him away and asked for a ransom and till this present day never returned my uncle. There has been rumors that my uncle was fed to the lion, other rumors that my uncle was tortured to pieces, and a rumor that my uncle was burned alive inside a can with diesel. There has never been any evidence of this and it has been killing my family slowly especially my grandmother and now it is killing me, because 2-3 times a week constantly I have been dreaming that he comes to us, that he comes home, and that I am crying while I hug and kiss him of joy. In my dreams I tell him how happy I am to see him, that we all missed him and that I knew he was alive all this time that I knew he would return to us. Last night I had a dream of him that someone in a blue grand marquis takes him home to us, that he was weak and sick. At the moment that I see him I hugged him and kissed him and turned to look at my mother and said, “I told you mom that he would come to us, I told you that he was alive and that all my dream would tell me he was alive, I knew my dream were right” then I said to my mother, “pinch me, hurt me, do something to me to prove this isn’t a dream and that he has come back to us”. I feel them so real, I miss him so much, I just hope that my dream are close to being true, as mostly my dreams always come true later on in life…I am confused….
Special K – You love your uncle so much and you desperately want him back. But whether your dream will come true, or whether they are a sign that you are wishing him back is not clear to me.
So pray for a dream asking for a clear indication. But let us hope that your last dream is really about his homecoming.
Tony
I am getting married very soon and I recently had a dream that I ran into my grandma and great grandmother (who are both dead) at a store. My great grandmother asked if it was going to be warm at the wedding because in the dream i guess it was going to take place outside. She said she wouldn’t be able to go if it was too cold. I told her there would be a cushion and blanket on every chair and we’d play lots of fun games. This reassured her. I am very confused about this dream.
i have dreamed about dead bodies for 3 nights in a row. i am disturbed. im looking for an explanation i suppose. the first was about having one in the boot of a car and worrying how i was going to cope with the act of burying it. the second was of my desceased grandad (2yrs ago) in his house and he was badly wrapped in recycling bags in the kitchen and the distress that no one had yet called anyone to take the body away (in my dream it had been 4 weeks since death) and the last one was in his house again and his cat was dead at the feeding bowl. i am awake tonight as im scared to go to sleep
Suzie – Be not afraid of death. All you are seeing are the images you have of death. When I was a boy living in the country the only death I saw was rabbits that had been killed, and were writhing with maggots.
That is an image of death that is taught in our culture – that we are nothing but a physical being, that when we die that is the end of us. That is why you see death as some sort of rubbish that has to be cleared away.
Fortunately that old view, fostered by a science that believe that the atom was the basic thing, therefore believed we are just physical and have no life after death. But of course that science has never explained consciousness, and never explained how people who are brain dead can still see their relatives. So when they are revived they can tell what they experienced. People who want to hold on to that belief that death is the end, say that such experiences are caused by hypoxia – lack of oxygen. They forget that lack of oxygen causes memory loss and gaps in consciousness. But having left my body and realised that the body itself is like a heavy glove we wear, a glove that dulls all our sense, and realised I was awake for the first time, with no loss of memory, I realise that you should change your view of death. Talk to your graddad and see what happens. See: http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/i-died-but-im-alive-superminds/
Tony
About 3 nights ago I had this dream that is still bothering me. Normally I don’t recall anything about my dreams but for some reason I can remember this one in full details. I was driving with my mother and my two children down a road surrounded by woods, and a river, or large stream running through it. We came across this little one story house that sat on the bank of the water in a small clearing of the trees, and we stopped to take a look. I recall telling my mother I did not like that it was by the water and had no fence, I didn’t like the idea of my kids playing so close to the water. There was a for sale sign in the yard a little worn out, so we just walked around looking at the outside of the house. A lady came out she was extremely over weight, and invited us inside to look around, I assume she was the owner. She let my two boys play in the living room and offered my mom a cup of coffee in the kitchen and told me to just feel free to look around the house. She lived there with her teenage daughter, and her daughters 3 year old little girl. I went into the first two room and recall thinking one could be for the kids and the other a play room, and found that one room had a door that led into the master bedroom so I went through it and found the teenage girl in the room. We talked for a short time and then a group of her friends entered the room. I couldn’t stop thinking where is the little 3 year old girl, her stuff was all over the house but there were no pictures of her and she wasn’t there. All of a sudden the teenager and her friends went from happy and nice to like evil, their skin was pale white, and eyes were bright red, and one of the guy friends told me “IT wants me gone now”. I ran from the room and grabbed my children and as I called for my mother I saw her slumped over the table with blood everywhere. The over weight lady came out of the kitchen with a knife telling me my mother sacrificed herself so I could leave with my children, but I had to leave now. I ran out the door carrying my younger son and practically dragging my older son and put them in the van without buckling them and drove off as fast as I could. I called 911 and they showed up at the house, they were able to save my mother, but the cop told me that there had been a lot of unexplained deaths in the house over the years. He told me that a 3 year old girl drowned in the bank 10 years ago, and the grandmother blamed her daughter and her friends for the death and murdered them all then took her own life. After he told me this I woke up. I’m very confused about this dream because I don’t know these people, never seen them in my life, and I have not experienced death in anyone close to me. I am trying to find meaning to this dream because its really bothering me.
Nicole – I believe this dream is a drama about fear. It started when you felt fear that your children might come to harm by the river.
Obviously it is healthy to watch out for your children, and to be anxious. But it is not healthy to fear for them in a non physical way. For instance fear for your children going out on a busy road is a physical fear, a real fear. But in the dream you began, I think, to fear for your children in a supernatural way.
I can be wrong, but this seems to fit the dream. And the change from natural to supernatural happened when the teenagers became evil and the awful things happened.
That is not a good thing to do. Such fears can open the doors to the worst traumas we have hidden within us. But because they are hidden – unconscious – we can create awful monstrous ideas about them – supernatural ideas – when they are only human fears.
The thing to learn is to be careful outwardly but positive inwardly. I know from experience that the most awful monsters in our dreams, and within us, are simply positive feelings and natural urges that we have repressed, denied, or even tried to kill. The Devil itself is only our own natural urges and drives that have either been denied, hurt or been abused by parents. Then what is natural becomes dark and dangerous – and it is all inside us. We are constantly avoiding, hiding from or denying our full flow of life through fear, pain or being taught rubbish.
The police appear to be your sense of what is right and wrong in your personal or social life. So that probably gave you a grounding.
Tony
Very interesting read about dreams and the spirit world. thank you very much,
Thank you for your encouragement.
It is a subject I have been very interested in and would like to write more about.
Tony
my brother has just passed away and l dreamed that he came back he was quite and l was asking him where he was and if he was coffined and came out from the ground or if when we were taking him for the funeral he fell from the car were he was but his answer was that he dont know and an old lady told him to go home or where he belong. l dont remember if its one or an other l was telling everybody that he came back and l was crying hugging and kissing him all the time. please can you tell me what does this dream means? thanks a lot
C mit – I think that from the amount of emotions you felt when saw him, it is certainly a real meeting. And the reason that he is confused is that he probably didn’t really have any idea of what happens when one dies, and so is quite lost. The old woman is someone who is trying to help him adjust and learn the way to be in this new world.
Or if he had a serious illness that led to his dying, that could also be the reason for him being confused. But talk to him and explain that his death was fine, and that there is a new and better life for him now. Tell him to look for help from those in his family or friends who are already ahead of him in the afterword. Say that all he has to do is to think of friends or relatives who have died and he will find them with him.
Tony
I would like to ask if you can tell what it means to dream about a person who comes back to life at his funeral. This is what I dreamt about a person who died few months ago. He was very loved in the family.
Marina – I feel your dream was a literal statement. That after he is thought of as dead, in fact he is alive, but not in the body any more.
Of course whatever truth you are touching in your dreams is filtered through your viewpoints, knowledge and your own vision of things. Therefore it comes out in the way your dream presented it.
Tony
great… and amazing summary…
my granny passed away a month before. we creamated her according to hindu customs. i had a dream in which i saw her back in home and i said “how are you? thank god that u could come back”. i called my sister to show that granny is not dead and she has come back. My granny told me that she got afraid of some red color with heat, so then she had come back to the home. i couldn’t remember what has happened after that. i woke up… few weeks later my sister had a dream of my granny came home and all my sisters &my mom were cried it seems. my granny told to my sister that my mom was been scolding her when she (granny) was alive and now my mom is the one who cries every moment whenever she remembers my granny. told to convey to my mom not to cry and as she (granny) is good and safe. in the later days of her death she (granny)was crying it seems and she is been kept in a big hall where many unidentified people were found. she had been offered food and the unidentified came running and snatched food from her it seems. then one of her relative came and placed some pinches of food in a vessel and the unidetified people came and ate the pinches it seems. now i feel that my granny is awaiting for something, she is been kept in a big hall and served with food and she gets helps even.
could you please tell me the meaning of these two dreams… please
Gowri Shanker – I think your granny must have grown up feeling humble. But she doesn’t need to be helped or served by others and waiting to be fed. After death all the difficulties of life can fall away. But if she is still feeling that she is a humble person maybe that is why she is in a big hall and waiting to be served.
I suggest that you speak to your granny and have a picture in your mind of her unveiling her true spiritual beauty, and encourage her to recognise that there are wonders waiting for her.
Also tell her to reach for the giver or light and love in the Hindu Pantheon – maybe Agni and Usha.
Tony
Great website…thank you!
I’m wondering if you can help me sort out some dreams I’ve been having the last few months or so, which contain deceased loved ones…mostly my mother and step-father.
In life, these two weren’t the most positive people, caused much division amongst family members, were selfish and manipulative. I love and miss them because they were my family, but truthfully, I don’t miss the negative influence they had on my life.
I have pretty much let go (forgiven?) them for what I perceive to be lousy parenting and I’m enjoying being my own person – although I’m aware that my upbringing will always, even in the smallest way, influence my daily life. I guess I’ve reached the point to accept that ‘it is what it is’, cannot change the past and to work through the negatives.
In the many dreams I’ve had in recent months, my deceased parents and I, and sometimes other people whom I cannot identify, are in either a house or building and we are all very happy to be with each other. Our task is always to clean, fix, move, or give away objects that belong to my parents.
In one dream, my mother asked me to redecorate and re-arrange her livingroom furniture. My step-father asked me to help him clean out the basement and I repaired a window also. We both then prepared to put outside, a tremendous amount of recycleables, but could not because a tornado was approaching.
In another dream, my deceased parents owned a house and several outbuildings, and I was there, once again with other unidentifiable people and I was helping them to give away, move, clean or fix their belongings as they were moving. The reason for their move was because my step-father had cancer. (He didn’t die of cancer). However, this was a happy occasion and the dream was very positive and enjoyable. I felt, in these dreams, that I was given the respect for my intelligence, compassion and sense of fairness that I never received in real life.
It seems that the symbolism in these dreams should be painfully obvious to me, but it is not. Could you possibly shed some light on what this all means, particularly in relation to the possessions of my parents, which I am always helping them to attend to.
Thanks for any insight you may have!
Regards,
JT
ihad a deam about this 4 bedroom house 2 rooms upstairs and 2 rooms downstairs the rooms downstairs were beautiful the whole house downstairs was gorgeous but when we got to the upstairs it was trashed and nasty it was just horrible then there was a cat it was evil and it was dead then an old lady she was very fat with short hair she was dead also it was so scary in order for her to go away i guess we had to put a key in the cat’s mouth but the cat was so evil it scratch me across the face i could actually feel the cuts i could feel everything in the house it was terrible i was so scared i woke up sweating and i could feel the pain from the scratches on my face but they weren’t there i had this dream before but with different people i seen this house somewhere but i don’t know where
ihad a deam about this 4 bedroom house 2 rooms upstairs and 2 rooms downstairs the rooms downstairs were beautiful the whole house downstairs was gorgeous but when we got to the upstairs it was trashed and nasty it was just horrible then there was a cat it was evil and it was dead then an old lady she was very fat with short hair she was dead also it was so scary in order for her to go away i guess we had to put a key in the cat’s mouth but the cat was so evil it scratch me across the face i could actually feel the cuts i could feel everything in the house it was terrible i was so scared i woke up sweating and i could feel the pain from the scratches on my face but they weren’t there i had this dream before but with different people i seen thiis house somewhere but i don’t know where
Tamara – You seem to have a very different upstairs life than a downstairs. Your normal everyday self has a sense of beauty, but very different situation in your sleeping self upstairs.
The description you give sounds like a witch figure, with an evil cat. And witches in dreams are usually a dark side of your mother. Perhaps when you were young you had a bad time with your mother or another woman. This has obviously interfered with your own self image, thus the cat scratches your face, and you can still feel it as you wake.
The key represents an idea or an attitude that will free you from her, and it has something to do with what has probably be said to you with great vindictiveness. So perhaps by imagining the key you will see what it is.
Tony
I read this article, but am still having trouble understanding. About two years ago, a girl who I had never spoked to-Kat-, but knew of due to her known extreme gothic look, took her own life soon after she gave birth to a baby. Last night, I had a strange dream where my friend and I were driving and we stopped to great a walking familiar face. That person took us to a filthy, grunge house where soon enough, infront of me in a rocking chair is Kat. I sat near her, she looked just as pale as ever, but hickeys on her-which is strange because she would cover her neck and arms usually. She talked to me as if I were a friend, but I knew I truley was not a friend. She begged for me, over and over to move into this filthy grunge house and over and over I simply said “I can’t Kat..I have home”…eventually the dream ended. I can’t seem to understand how she came into the picture, sure I think about her, but not every second. I wish I knew what the meaning of the house was, what was so special about staying there, but it was so dark, my dream state was too uncomfortable to find out.
Ari – I can see why this dream is difficult to understand, because there are at least two possibilities for it. The first is that as you were driving – in your dream this means going somewhere, exploring, somewhere new – you thought of Kat. But it wasn’t that you were seeking her, but she was seeking you. That i why she called to you again and again.
In dreams we use any images that can fit, so the grungy house is her living condition. It is the environment she creates because of her negative way of life. She begs you to be with her to help her out of her situation. And in dreams this doesn’t mean you actually going there, but being with her in thoughts or in prayer for her. Thoughts are things at that level, though Kat may not realise that herself. So any good things you can send her way could help her.
The other possible meaning is that in some way you got caught in a negative thought and wanted no part of it – thus again thoughts are things. So the house and Kat in your dream could mean you faced the possibility of depression and drew away.
Tony
I thought you had some interesting observations about dreaming, but you take an unfortunate turn towards some sort of New Agey supernaturalism about halfway through.
The notion that so-called ‘near death experiences’ offer ‘evidence’ of ‘life after death’ have long been discredited. These experiences have known, physical causes (usually hypoxia, oxygen depravation) and have been reproduced in test subjects. It’s important to understand that NO person who has had a ‘near death experience’ has actually been dead, certainly not ‘brain dead’; the ‘near death experience’ is a product of LIVING, oxygen deprived brains, not a window into a ‘new plane of existence’ (there isn’t a shred of evidence that consciousness is anything but a consequence of brain activity).
The story about the woman whose dead son quietly followed the doctor around is particularly ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense that a mother who had such dramatic proof that her son continued to exist after death would be so grieved. We grieve for the dead because we know in our hearts they exist no more. This is why we don’t mourn the exit of living people from our lives (i.e. someone moves away) the way we do people who have died. People like these stories because they’d like to think that death isn’t the end. It’s called DENIAL.
ML – I am sorry, but I think you are years out of date. I have been out of my body myself, and it was nothing like hypoxia. Hypoxia leaves a person in a confused state of mind, with gaps in their memory that they cannot explain. The other explanations such a wish fulfilment and delusions equally do not measure up to the actual experience of being out of the body.
The NDE’er is very clear, and their nature is changed radically after it. Such changes last a life time. Whereas the hypoxia doesn’t radically change a person in a positive way. These explanations are given by people who are stuck in an old world view on which the atom was the basis of everything. As an atom was material, it led to materialism. Therefore a dead brain must mean the person is dead. Having suffered a severe stroke in which my speech and ability to use my right side was lost, I could see that the brain is only a way of making our body move. Whereas I, the real me, was behind it all knowing that the mechanism of the brain might be rebuilt. But as soon as quantum physics showed that what was behind the atom was something beyond explanation and transcended time and space, the whole field has opened up.
Other doctors try to explain it as a mental illness such as psychosis or schizophrenia. But it doesn’t fit. Here is a doctors interview with a mentally ill patient:
Doctor: Hello. I would like to know what brings you to the hospital. Why did you come in?
Patient: I don’t know why they brought me here.
Doctor: Well what kind of difficulties are you having today? Is there anything troubling you?
Patient: Well, I know these people are putting radio waves in my head… on a frequency not of our world.
Doctor: What people are they?
Patient: I don’t know who they are. They are at least a thousand miles away, but they are sending messages into my head all the time. Please call the FBI and get them down here.
And so it goes on. And here is an interview with a person who experienced an NDE.
“I found myself floating up toward the ceiling, I could see everyone around the bed very plainly, even my own body. I thought how odd it was that they were upset about my body. I was fine and I wanted them to know that, but there seemed to be no way to let them know.
I became aware of an opening, if I can call it that. It appeared to be elongated and dark and I began to zoom through. I was puzzled yet exhilarated. I came out of this tunnel into a realm of soft brilliant light. The love was everywhere.”
I realised from my own experience of leaving my body that the reason we cannot know about the dead is because we are so dead ourselves. In other words, the only way to communicate with most of the living is by making sounds with our mouth, or physical movements. Yet the way to communicate with the dead is through thought and feelings. Try communicating with a person near you through thoughts that are not showing on your face or body – you might as well be ‘dead’!
And here is an example of someone stuck in an old paradigm.
Dr. Karagulla, a famous neurologist, in her book Breakthrough to Creativity, has described an experiment she made with two doctors. To test heightened sensory perception she blindfolded one of the doctors and gave him a photograph. It was a medical picture of a pregnant woman. He was asked to pass his fingertips over the photograph and report any impressions and sensations. At this the other doctor began to protest that what she was asking was not possible. But at this point the blindfolded doctor began to speak of impressions which vividly described the picture he held. The other doctor began to protest so violently, and began to feel so ill, the experiment had to be terminated.
Tony
PS The quotes of interviews are from Raymond Moody. M.D., B.A., M.A., Ph.D. in his book The Light Beyond.
What i have read make sense in comparison to what is happening currently. I dreamed that i dance with my uncle who past away long time ago as well as may ex boss who also past away is watching on.
Thanks
Frank – I feel more and more that ‘watching on’ of those who are dead and are with us. I had a dream recently of going into my house. I saw someone had put a thin curtain up over a wide door. When i started to push the curtain aside a strong hand grasped mine. And then I knew it was my mother reaching through that thin veil that separates us. So much love came to me.
Tony
I am a sophomore in High School my freshman year one of my class mates passed away to brain cancer. The past few nights I keep having dreams that he isn’t really dead. I have the same dream where I’m in school and I see him surrounded by people. When I finally get to him I hug him for a while and ask him a billion times what he is doing back. He tells me that they were able to bring him back and how excited he is to be back. I always cry in my dream from sheer happiness and wake up really crying. It has been 9 months yesterday and I don’t know why I am having dreams now. I had dreams about him the night of his memorial service of him hugging me and telling me it would be okay because i got in a fight with a friend over his death. But I don’t understand why he decided to come back now after all this time.